


bandaids are useful

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [51]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Disabled Character, Dissociative Disorders, Gen, Just Add Kittens, Mentally Ill Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 10:24:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3725287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The kitten helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bandaids are useful

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it.

The funny thing (Steve realizes, and pretty quickly) is that the biggest way the kitten helps is that she just doesn't _fit_ in anything but the real world. 

There's other stuff, yeah: the general beneficial effects on human beings of small warm living things (probably linked to how proto-humans that felt good about small warm living things successfully raised more young), plus how it's rewarding to have stuff you're needed for but's still simple enough exhaustion and depression doesn't make it impossible, tentative social bonds - and probably most importantly, that Abrikoska also seems adamant on rewarding all of the above by gluing herself to the source of all food, cleaning, warmth and comfort and purring like there's no tomorrow. And those are all good, and real. 

But the key is, the core is, actually even more simple: she makes absolutely no damn sense anywhere but reality. 

And _that_ means her fuzzy, inadvertent little super-power is derailing some of the episodes of derealization or even psychosis - at least some of the time - before they get started. 

Not all of them, and not if things have already sunk in. Nothing helps, or at least nothing _stops_ the episode, if things have gone past the point where Bucky's brain kicks the part of him that knows what's going on out, slams the door, and substitutes something _it_ thinks is more likely to get them through this alive and without further torture.

(And it's amazing, Steve's noticed and notices every time it happens, just _how fast_ and how much even _his_ brain wants to slide that into euphemisms and soften it. He actively resists the impulse: torture is fucking torture.) 

If it's gone that far it can't be headed off, though Steve thinks Abrikoska helps for the same reason she _can_ (and does) head off things just while it's starting. Because while the agitation's just starting, while that now-maladaptive part of Bucky's brain is _starting_ to work itself up trying to find out what's going to go wrong, a tiny orange baby cat wandering through, complaining and falling over, presents a pretty huge bump in that road. 

She's manifestly real. It's hard to write her off as a fiction. She's what Steve's heard called a _vocal_ cat by people who understandably don't want to use the word "whiny" and lessen the chance of other people adopting one of the ones that get euthanized every day. And even if she's not making noise for some reason, she's pretty solidly there to the touch, and reacts to the touch in ways that _also_ don't fit any explanation but reality. 

Like purring, licking skin and meowing again. 

A lot of other things can get twisted up, a lot of things can get ripped apart and put back together to fit some other possibility, some other story that still makes sense to the conditioning that's pulling everything off-kilter. The condo can, Steve can, it's easy - it could all be a test and one that's about to go wrong, one that Bucky's about to fail and pay for. 

Tiny baby cat that thinks he's the source of everything good, not so much. 

(Not that it's impossible - which is why there's a point where she doesn't help so much anymore - but it crosses a threshold of the ridiculous.) 

The only reality that really makes it make any sense, any at all, is the real one. The one where everything's fine. 

It's not magic, it's not a cure-all, but once Steve _thought_ he noticed, he actually started keeping track and he is pretty damn sure there's a quantifiable decline in middling-Off days, and there's definitely been a decline in days that _start out_ mostly fine and, without anything noticeable _happening_ , collapse into Bad. They haven't disappeared. But they've declined. 

And this is why Steve does not complain at all, or even give the little animal an incredibly dirty look, when she manages beyond all sensible explanation to puke _on the clothes press_ , when there were no clothes on it, necessitating Steve more or less taking the damn thing apart to carefully clean (and in some cases lemon oil) every single part (and this includes _ungluing and regluing_ some of it) all of the cat-puke out before he dares let the thing get even the tiniest bit warm. 

While he's in the middle of it, she pads over and sniffs at the tools, points her face in his general direction, and gives a high pitched kitten yowl. Then she jumps up on the bed to sniff at the back of his neck instead.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] bandaids are useful](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4106926) by [echolalaphile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/echolalaphile/pseuds/echolalaphile)
  * [A and B in Sunlight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7600045) by [danceswchopstck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswchopstck/pseuds/danceswchopstck)




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